


Synthesis of the Galaxy

by BlueLightningAndNexus



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst, F/M, Gen, M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, Outer Space, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Depression, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Space Battles, Space Opera, Superheroes, Supervillains, Team Bonding, Team Fluff, Team as Family, Twins, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:48:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26606995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueLightningAndNexus/pseuds/BlueLightningAndNexus
Summary: Hundreds of years in the future, superpowers called "Helices" have emerged, leading to the cultural phenomenon of superheroes. Helices have led to unimaginable technological advances; within decades, interstellar travel and galactic politics became the norm.The Alliance of Worlds are naturally skeptical, blaming superpowers for the increased tension in the galaxy's Outer Ring, but the Holy Magus Order has embraced superpowers, and they work with superheroes to defeat demons and dark wizards alike.Nat Dachis and his three friends Jace Tenor, Julia Tenor, and Reggie Goldbloom hope to become superheroes and travel across the Milky Way. Their fate seems tied to Thessa Vecent, a reclusive scavenger from across the galaxy. As they investigate the bizarre gray area where heroes and space meet, they become increasingly aware of a threat to the galaxy bigger than anyone can imagine.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Kudos: 1





	1. Prologue

After he woke up that night in a cold sweat, Naotaro Dachis, better known as Nat by his friends and family, concluded that it would be another one of “those nights.” Those stupid nights where his head was filled with bizarre, horrible ideas that were either figments of his overactive imagination or terrible, terrible memories. 

He rolled from his back onto his side, glancing at the alarm clock. It read 3:03 am. He sighed.  _ Not again _ . 

Despite it being autumn, and despite sleeping with no shirt and only a thin sheet, sweat continued to fall down his chest and face. 

He tried closing his eyes, but all he saw were the images that flashed in his mind: a wave of frost, freezing him to the bone; green, shadowy wisps of energy; a longsword, glowing blue in the night; the sight of his mother...

“No!” he nearly shouted. Without thinking, his arm flashed and burned with energy; it was only for a split-second, before he shut off his Vector, but it singed the sheets nonetheless. 

“Shit!” he half-whispered. His family was still asleep. He leaped to his feet, standing up on the bed and reached up to the smoke detector, pulling the batteries out a split-second before it started ringing. He exhaled, relieved at the close call. 

Afterwards, he looked out the window. It was an ungodly hour of the night, but Paradisa still swarmed with people, cars, sounds, lights. He was glad he had lived in a city his whole life: it helped him adjust to falling asleep even with so much going on. (If he was a country boy like Jace or Julia before he moved in with the Locherty’s, he was sure to get even less sleep than he was getting now). 

He pulled the window up, and immediately regretted it. The cold October air nipped at his sweaty, bare skin, and he found himself shivering. He’d turn his Vector back on just to heat himself up, but that seemed like a risky move at the moment, and it would defeat the purpose of why he opened the window in the first place. 

Fanning some of the smoke out the window, he wondered if he should call in sick to school. It would be a rather lazy day: no tests, no projects, nothing. 

Nat sighed. He knew he would miss his friends, and he didn’t feel like staying indoors all day. He’d wait another 10 minutes just to make sure all the smoke was gone, and then he would go to sleep. 

*Knock, knock*

He glanced at the door, sighing. He knew that knock. 

“Come in, Annie,” he half-whispered. Speaking quietly was--and would never be--Nat’s strong suit. 

She emerged, still in the robe she wore to bed. Or, at least, he thought she went to bed. He never could be sure. Annie was 19-years old and taking community college classes at home for a year before she moved out and went to a university, and it seemed like she was always doing homework at some unusual hour of the night. 

“You okay?” she asked, taking a strand of chestnut hair and moving it out of her face. 

Some of Nat’s friends--mainly Julia--said that he looked kind of like the Locherty’s, but he didn’t buy it. They were his cousins. Actually, not even that was true. His father and uncle were half-brothers, so Nat shared even less DNA than usual. He was slightly above average in height, with straight black hair that grew out and narrow, and thin black eyes. Nat didn’t have many memories of his mother, but looking at old family photographs his uncle saved, Nat could tell he looked a lot like her; she had the same hair and eyes as him. 

He stood head and shoulders above all of his family, except maybe for Dan, who was still an inch or two below his adopted son. They all had strawberry blonde or brown hair, and all had these wide, expressive eyes that made them seem like Looney Tunes characters. 

“I’m fine,” Nat mumbled. 

“Another dream?” she asked. He nodded his head. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Annie asked, voice calming as the ocean and gentle as a breeze. 

She closed the door, making sure to close the handle so the *click* of the knob in place wouldn’t wake their parents. 

“Not really,” he admitted. “I’m just trying to get some fresh air. Please, go back to sleep,” he pleaded, “I don’t want you to stay up for my sake.”

“It’s no biggie,” she said, sitting down next to him on his too-soft bed. “Beats studying,” she explained, the smell of coffee on her breath. 

The two sat like this for a few minutes, in comfortable silence. Nat practiced some of the breathing exercises she taught him: in through the nose and out through the mouth, as much as possible. He felt hot air expelling from his mouth every time, like a dragon breathing fire in some kind of children’s story. He closed his eyes as he practiced, blocking out all visual stimulus, focusing on just his health and the air entering his lungs. 

“Thanks,” he said, after a while. 

“I still think you should see that therapist mom recommended,” Annie said after a minute. “It's not healthy to bottle these feelings up. You need a professional to help you.” 

If Nat’s eyes weren’t closed, he would roll them. “I know,” he said instead. “I will.” 

Annie said nothing more. She gave him a hug and left, barely making a sound. 

Nat turned back around and closed the window, the air in his room feeling fresher, crisper, colder. 

He looked through the window, out at the gold-white stars in the sky. Ever since he was small, Nat wanted to journey out into the cosmos, exploring vast worlds and meeting new people. Of the few memories he had from his childhood, one of them was eagerly explaining to his father how he wanted to join the Alliance and see the galaxy. 

Everyday, it seems the world got weirder, denser, stranger. It seemed that just about anything was possible. 

Nat held out his right hand. He couldn’t truly explain how his Vector worked to someone who didn’t have one, but it was similar to flexing a muscle; he closed his eyes, focusing on the energy within his body. Nat could feel the nerves in his hand overflowing with energy, and that energy evolved, crystallized. He heard a small crackling sound, like a fire starting or embers burning; when he opened his eyes, smoke covered the fingers of his right hand. 

As Nat practiced more, his precision increased immensely, and the force of his attacks improved in tandem. This power--this strange, unexplainable energy that had manifested rather recently--was a testament to how weird his world could get. 

When Nat drifted to sleep, he dreamt of the stars and the cosmos. 

___________

At the exact same time, but millions of light years across the galaxy, Thessa jolted awake. 

There was a noise, a massive boom, like thunder exploding mere feet above her head; followed by some terrible impact. The entire ship shook. The metal creaking of her old, rusty ship (about four decades older than any of the other ships she had seen scavengers use) was haunting to the young girl. The sound was like a metallic ghost waking from her dreamless, lonely sleep. 

Thessa was sprawled out in her single, filthy mattress when the noise occurred. The old thing was in the ship when she first found it; even after cleaning it in the first month, brown spots still remained. 

When that boom first hit, Thessa was sprawled out across the mattress, her thin white sheet discarded to the side, partially fallen on the ground. That boom shook the ship enough that Thessa fell right out of the bed and onto her side, her shoulder taking the majority of the impact. 

“Shit!” she shouted as she landed on the ground. Pulling herself up, Thessa felt a great stiffness in her neck, and her shoulder ached when she tried to move her arm. 

_ Great,  _ she thought as she grabbed a sweatshirt from a nearby pipe protruding from the adjacent steel gray wall,  _ now I need to go figure out what that was.  _

Throwing the sweatshirt on, Thessa grabbed her key hanging from the door handle. She quickly inserted the thin, brass piece of metal into the lock of her nearby plastic door, slipping the key in and clicking it in place in an instant, before throwing it open and pulling out a white, bulky radiation suit with gray shock-absorber plates lining the knees, shoulders, elbows and forearms. 

Pulling the suit on as fast as its rough, inflexible, awkwardly rigid exterior could allow her; Thessa looked out at her small, digital alarm clock as she did so. Whatever the hell fell over and shook her ship, it knocked the alarm clock right off her fold-down table. Thessa had to tilt her head as she zipped up the suit to read the alarm clock, which read in small, bright, electric blue numbers “0103”. 

_ Aaaaaand I only got three hours of sleep last night,  _ she thought as she pulled on her anti-radiation helmet with one hand, hooking the nozzle leading to her oxygen take into the side of the helmet with the other.  _ Great.  _

One thing about staying on a planet like Gyra they don’t tell you about; insomnia is  **stupidly** common without proper sun for 130 of the 200 day years they have here. Even then, based on the weather, wind patterns and size of the ash clouds covering the horizon, sunshine tended to only last a few minutes on the worst days, and a couple hours on the best. Thessa had planned for her stay here, trying to time her arrival in accordance with the start of this 70-day window of opportunity. She did not plan for how limited the actual sunlight would be. It was wreaking havoc on her sleep schedule. 

Finishing up the last of her preparations, Thessa sprinted out of her bedroom/hallway, into the exit/entrance chamber, and punched in the code for closing the door behind her, making sure to give the automatic machine several seconds of time in order to make sure that it sealed completely. Once this was done, she grabbed the rusted metal hatch of the door. 

_ This can’t possibly be an explosion, right?  _ She thought frantically as she grabbed the small, ancient piece of metal with her thick, gloved hand.  _ I thought all the mines left over in this area were long since deactivated.  _

Resolving to get to the bottom of the issue when she got outside, Thessa turned the handle and pushed open the door with all her might, sprinting out of the exit chamber. Instantly, she saw what was wrong. Her sprints slowed to a light jog, then a walk, and then she froze in place and observed the cause of all this commotion; all in a time frame of a moment or two. 

The nearby building that Thessa had parked her ship at, long since destroyed and abandoned after the war, was caving away. It was on the opposite side of the building however; Thessa hadn’t even noticed the structural damage when she first parked her ship, it was too out of sight from her cockpit. But now, several yards away from the ship, past the shadow of the massive skyscraper-like structure and around the corner of the building, she could see it:

Gaps in the building, likely where bombs went off before, were beginning to crack in the brittle concrete around them. The booming sound was the result of several of these cracks combining and the materials of the structure coming off in large amounts. One such piece of rubble was gargantuan, the size of a ship; it was responsible for shaking the ground and the ship on top of it. By this piece of rubble was several tiles and bits of material, a chalk-color compared to everything else around her. 

Looking up, Thessa noticed that there was an extension coming off part of the building. When she first arrived on this planet, her clunky, barely-functioning ship penetrated through the ashen atmosphere and revealed a gray world of desolation, she noticed this extension and considered it an interesting architectural touch. There was a large hole going through the extension, like someone took a bus-sized javelin and threw it right through the building. 

Deducing that the mismatched bits of tile were from this extension, she could only conclude that the boulder had smashed into this extension, rolling off it and slightly to the left of where it would have gone otherwise; hence the reasoning for a massive, explosion-like noise before the actual impact of the boulder against the barren, lifeless ground. 

Looking at the building, it was strange for Thessa to see the materials worn away in it in layers, like a lone, stone snake shedding its skin in slow motion. An interesting, yet unnerving sight; maybe anxiety inducing enough to scare any other normal scavengers. Luckily for Thessa, she had absolutely no sense of self-preservation. 

Nothing was wrong with the foundation, however; she peered inside of the building, finding that the walls seemed relatively intact. Clearly, whatever problems were with this building and its materials, and by extension, whatever was causing massive boulders to fall off it and hit the ground with a force strong enough to shake the whole ship; it was coming from the top of the building. Not much anyone on this godforsaken planet could do about it, even if they wanted to. 

_ But what caused the building to start cracking, now? Some 120 odd years after the blasts devastated this area. What changed? Why is it doing this now? Here? _

Resolving it wasn’t safe to be in this part of the city for much longer, Thessa removed her gaze from the massive piece of gray rubble a couple hundred meters away turned back around and started walking slowly back to her ship, determined to park her ship a few blocks down the road and get some much-deserved beauty sleep. Even if the foundation was almost completely intact, it wouldn’t make much sense to be around here any longer. Better to spend the next half hour checking the ship’s engines, prepping it for takeoff and relocating to the shade of another building; then to stick around falling bits of rubble and find out why exactly this building was falling apart 12 decades after it was first bombarded. 

Thessa felt a chill go down her spine. Ever since she’d landed a day or two prior to scavenge the area and make repairs on her ship, the planet had been creeping her out. Just what were the Gyrans fighting that was so powerful they felt the need to bomb the fuck out of their entire planet? When she flew into this star system, she was surprised to find total radio silence; this system has 6 planets and 7 moons. Where were all the other ships? Whatever attacked this planet apparently attacked the entire system. 

Gyra was located in the Outer Ring of the galaxy. The Outer Rings were notorious for scarce information, limited travel and isolated civilizations. As Thessa walked through the city--which her ship scanners had correctly identified as the planet’s long-gone capital of Twentor City--she was surprised at how well-preserved the buildings were. Sure, dust caked the sidewalks and rubble was scattered, but that all seemed to be from the bombs themselves; none of the damage in Twentor seemed to be from natural erosion. And where was all the wildlife? In her 19 years of life, Thessa had never encountered a planet so quiet. It was...eerie. There weren't even any insects to bother her while she worked. And you would think that if the Gyrans were fighting another civilization, there would be signs of a battle: ancient corpses, the skin turned to dust over the years; weapons of war, long rusted and useless; or ships that hadn’t worked in decades. Why was there nothing? 

It was as if everyone...disappeared. 

Thessa resolved to get off the planet as soon as possible. 

As she walked, Thessa could also feel a dull pressure in her shoulder. 

_ Oh yeah,  _ she thought.  _ I should also put some ice on this when I fall asleep tonight.  _

Thessa wasn’t a medical expert in any capacity; most of the treatment for her injuries was built around three mottos: a) if it’s purple, that’s bad; b) if it’s gone, that’s bad; and c) if it hurts, that’s bad. 

Was it simplistic, archaic even? Yes. Did it work well enough and serve Thessa when it needed to? Absolutely. Will she ever change it? Not in this life, no sir. 

This resolution firm in her mind, Thessa was surprised to hear something. 

It was faint, nearly nonexistent, but definitely there. Echoing eerily throughout the small area was a…yell. A cry for help, if ever she heard one. 

“Help! Is anybody out there!”

In an instant, Thessa flipped around, her trajectory reversing as she ran back over to the crash site of the boulder-sized piece of rubble. Running was…difficult, to say the least, in this rigid exterior outfit, but Thessa barely managed. Thessa’s muscles were burning as they pushed against the inflexible, armor-like structure of her containment suit; her throat was dry and 

By the time she arrived at the other side of the building, she could see what the problem was and who was calling for help. 

It was a young woman, only a few years older than Thessa herself, she was backed into a corner against the building, but a piece of rubble had fallen and trapped her, obscuring her view and preventing her from moving. As the rest of the foundation cracked like ice, her cries continued. 

The fight-or-flight instinct that had helped Thessa for so long in her years of living alone suddenly shut off like a dead lightbulb; she found herself sprinting to the woman, nearly tripping over herself in the process. 

When Thessa found herself standing in front of the woman, she got a better look. The concrete was slowly slipping down the length of the wall, putting more pressure on the woman’s legs. In a few minutes, her femurs would be broken; a few minutes more, and she would never walk again. If Thessa couldn’t get this boulder off her, the woman would likely die here, either from the falling rubble or her suit cracking and exposing her to the noxious atmosphere. She had thin blonde hair, and her eyes were wide and pleading as she looked at Thessa. 

Without saying a word, Thessa squatted down, placing her gloved hands firmly under the slab, and rose--or, at least, she tried to. Lifting with her legs, she moved the slab slightly, before she lost her grip and it fell right back down. The woman screamed, either out of pain or the fear of dying here. 

“Hey, hey,” Thessa asked, getting the woman’s attention back on her. “You’re fine, I got this. What’s your name?”

The woman took rapid, shallow breaths in and out; at this rate, she would deplete her own oxygen supply out of panic. “Dela,” she managed to force out. 

“Dela?” Thessa repeated, readjusting her grip. “That’s a pretty name, Dela. I’m gonna get you out of here, but I can’t lift this whole thing. As soon as your legs are free enough, I need you to crawl as fast as you can. Ready?”

Dela nodded in agreement, wondering if this was the day she would die. Thessa wasn’t so pessimistic. 

“Ok...go!”

Thessa was more talking to herself than the woman. Trying again, she mustered every ounce of strength in her forearms; she failed to hear another ship land nearby.  _ C’mon body, do your magic _ , she thought to herself. After a moment, the boulder felt lighter; no, Thessa became stronger. As if a current were moving through her, she felt an energy-- **the** energy--charge her muscles, and the concrete slab went up half an inch, then one, then four. 

“Go,  **go** !” Thessa shouted. Dela immediately crawled out at a rapid pace, and the second her last toe was out, Thessa released the energy; the concrete’s weight overwhelmed her instantly, and she dropped it without a second thought. As Dela started to pick herself up from the ground, Thessa ran over and grabbed her arm, pulling her to her feet and carrying the woman away from the collapsing area in the bridal position. 

Had she been less focused on saving this stranger, Thessa might’ve noticed the crew running towards her, their atmospheric suits a fair amount less damaged than hers. 

“Take her!” Thessa shouted. “Check her legs!”

Thessa intended to hand off the girl back to her crewmates, but was quite surprised when one of them pulled Thessa’s arms and brought her on as well. Before she had a chance to object, the ship door closed. 


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nat, Reggie, Julia and Jace go hunting.

**Three Weeks Later**

Nat always had his head in the clouds.

Maybe it had to do with his powers. Maybe it had more to do with his childhood, and his family, and how his life was abruptly cut short and he was shipped off to relatives he’d never met and started attending a school that was leagues above the academic difficulty it was used to. With no one around and years worth of questions, Nat had nothing to do but think in silence during classes and contemplate how he got here or what happened to his folks. Or maybe he was just like this, because he was like this; no particular reason, this was just how he was made.

At the very least, it didn’t make his academic life any easier.

“Naotaro, are you still with us?”

Nat snapped back to attention, the giggling of his classmates alerting him that he had made some kind of mistake, or had zoned out again. Right, right. He was still in school. He still had a few more hours. But tonight was the big night. He was close.

“Um, yes, Mr. Boston, sir. Sorry, I was--”

“If you could please get along with the lesson, Mr. Dachis,” his French teacher, Mr. Owen Boston, told him, his voice thin with impatience and annoyance. He never did like Nat, but he had a good reason why; the boy wasn’t exactly known for paying much attention during his class. Or, any class for that matter. “Page 76, example three. Could you translate this sentence for us?” Boston briefly held a fist over his mouth and cleared his throat, before turning back to the teacher’s copy of the textbook laid out on his desk, and he read: “Susan greatly disliked the commute to her work; traffic took too long, it was always cold, and she never seemed to arrive on time.”

With a speed that’d make Lorena jealous, Nat rose to his feet and flipped to the page in his textbook. “Susan n’aimait pas beaucoup le trajet vers son travail; la circulation a pris trop de temps, il faisait toujours froid, et elle n’a jamais semblé arriver à l’heure.”

With that, Nat sat down, satisfied. His desk was located towards the back-center of the classroom, and as he sat down he took a glance a few feet forwards towards Jace Tenor. Jace wore baby blue jeans with a slight tear above the left knee and his signature green jacket, this time over a solid fuchsia T-shirt. He gave Nat a quick thumbs up and flashed an uncharacteristic smile, before turning back to their teacher.

“Well...adequate job, Mr. Dachis. Your pronunciation was a bit off, but at least you can translate quickly on your feet.”

Nat chose to take that as a complement, nodding in agreement. Right as their teacher finished the final word of his sentence, the bell behind them rang.

“Class, don’t forget to study chapters 8 through 10 for the test tomorrow. This exam will be harder than any you’ve taken before,” he said, desperately trying to get his student’s attention as they poured out into the halls.

As Nat walked into the halls, he looked out the massive glass windows that covered the hall walls, giving him a great view of the city in front of him. He never could get bored of the sight of Paradisa: he was in the Bright Lights District, where most of the best schools were located. Paradisa Central Academy had more height than width; Central Academy, as opposed to being stretched out across a wide area like some of the other schools that he’d attended, was a massive building rising into the clouds. The linguistics class for upperclassmen was located on the 17th floor, and from here, Nat could see miles upon miles of city stretching into the horizon.

Nat was figuratively yanked out of his train of thought by Jace, who physically yanked him out of his position in the hallway.

“Hey, you alright man?” Jace asked his best friend of many years. “You seem out of it today.”

Nat shook his head. “Yeah, sorry. I’m fine.”

In truth, Nat was just excited. He and Jace had been listening to the police scanner for the past several days, and he was hoping to find this elusive killer that had been roaming the streets of Paradisa for many nights. None of the city’s best heroes--from The Pearl Paladin to Fast Slicer--had found him, but Nat was feeling lucky today.

The two started walking towards their next class, moving towards the stairs that led to the 16th floor, where all of the chemistry classes were located. Nat wasn’t particularly looking forward to it, but every period brought him closer to that ever-elusive final bell that signaled the end of the school day.

“Are we still on for tonight?” Nat asked. “You told your sister, right?”

Jace clicked his tongue for a moment. “Uh...yeah, I told her,” he said after a pause. His tone was unsteady, and he struggled to find the words for such a simple response.

Nat raised an eyebrow. “Dude, are you alright? You sound worried about this.”

Jace paused for a moment, pensive. “Sometimes I get a bit worried about this. I get anxious, just like anyone else about to enter the world that we are. I sometimes ask myself those questions: ‘Don’t you think we’re getting a bit in over our heads?’ or ‘What if this completely blows up in our face?”’

But that anxiety left Jace’s face, and Nat swore he saw his green eyes flash with energy. “But then I remember what you can do, and what I can do, and what my sister can do. And I know that we’ll be able to do this,” he said, the barest hint of a smile on his face.

Nat patted his friend on the back. “Hey, that’s the spirit.”

The bell rang again, signaling that they had one more minute until their next class. Jace grabbed Nat by the sleeve of his shirt and pulled him away. “Come on, we’ll be late for our class,” the younger boy said.

___________________

This is a weird world. Nat Dachis, Jace Tenor, Julia Tenor, and Reggie Goldbloom knew this reality better than anyone, each for their own reasons.

This was a world that had been irreparably changed in the early 20th century, with the arrival of metahumans. A world where these metahumans grew more and more rampant in various parts of the world for hundreds of years; where these metas now roamed the streets, both as superpowered criminals and the guardians that have taken it upon themselves to stop them. A world where technology exploded, and the ability of man to reach the stars and contact other life had become a reality.

“So, you think he’s our guy?” Julia asked.

The four teens were perched atop a small apartment building, looking out at the crowded streets below. In particular, Nat and Julia had their eyes focused on one man. He was a few inches taller than anyone else down below, a black coat draped across his thin body and a small, blue scarf around his neck, covering his nose and mouth. He glanced left and right before continuing down the street.

It was a marketplace. One of the smaller ones in the Eastern District, but still big enough that hundreds of people shopping with their friends and family was a normal quantity. Below them, Nat saw tiny thrift shops, filled with snazzy outfits and cute trinkets; vendors selling all kinds of food from around the world; young 20-somethings walking around, arms filled with gift bags; and, at the end of the street, the occasional Taxi or pickup service dropping off some more people. Amidst a sea of freshly-dressed, happy teenagers and adults trying new foods and buying clothes they didn’t need, their guy--a lone wolf dressed in all black--stood out like a sore thumb.

If he really was their guy, going into a crowded place like this would be a high-risk, high-reward sort of deal. If anyone was on his tail, blending in with a sea of people would be the best policy, and most half-decent cops would either lose sight of him the moment he entered a crowded marketplace street like this or alert him by trying (and failing) to give chase. On the other hand, this particular street was surrounded by alleys, and if anyone were to intercept him, that would be the most effective way.

Nat was still getting used to the city, but he considered himself as having a fairly good idea of the city’s many paths, back alleys, turns and twists; in the event this guy bolted, he figured he could give chase. Besides, he was the fastest one of the four.

“Police scanners reported seeing someone about 6 feet and 2 inches at the scene of the crime, wearing a black coat,” Jace responded. “It’s not much, but we should check it out.”

Nat sensed a twinge of uncertainty in Jace’s voice. The younger boy was always the more responsible, level-headed of the two, so it made sense he had his doubts about this idea. He knew Jace was just exercising caution, and he knew how embarrassing it would be for all of them if this turned out to be some random guy and not the dreaded killer the Paradisa Police Department had been after for a while; they’d surely receive disciplinary action, and the other three could practically kiss their chance goodbye of going to a good meta school. But he couldn’t explain it: something about this guy screamed to every fiber of Nat’s being, telling him that this was the guy they’d been hunting for so long. No one else seemed to pick up on this; it was like a sixth sense only Nat possessed.

But Nat also knew how much Jace and Julia wanted this. He did too, but maybe not as much as the twins. He and Reggie had turned 17 a few months ago, but those two were only 16. All three of them had to think about enrolling in a new school soon, and he knew how much they wanted to get into Champions Academy.

For Reggie, it was his heritage. He came from an entire family of metas. His older brother--The Tracker of Kingcester City--had just rocketed towards the top of the popularity polls, and what The Tracker lacked in raw power and flashiness he made up for in brutal efficiency and creativity, quickly taking down some of Kingcester’s most intricate and feared crime networks. Before that, his sister Griffa had taken New Durass by storm with her ferrokinesis, and was still considered one of the best agents the Heroes Network had to offer. She’d already gone public by the time she was Reggie’s age, and Nat knew it was causing his former rival colossal amounts of anxiety. For as much as Reggie got under Nat’s skin, the Vector-user was still willing to support his friend, albeit a bit reluctantly.

For Jace and Julia...well, it was more about being like their father, especially for Jace. If they could capture a killer that had the Police Department themselves stumped, it would surely land them the early admission scholarships they’d so desperately been craving and jumpstart all of their careers as heroes.

“Do you want me to go in?” Julia asked. Nat was unsure who exactly the question was directed at, but Jace answered.

“No, it could be a bit risky. I wouldn’t want you getting hurt,” the younger twin replied.

The apartment building they were stationed on was a mesh of piping and machinery. Other buildings surrounded them on all sides. As Nat and Julia sat on the edge of the building, scanning the world below, Jace sat on a nearby air conditioning unit, and Reggie was leaning against the door that led to the apartment staircase.

Julia rolled her eyes. “I’m more than capable of handling myself.”

“I know that!” Jace shot back, a bit defensive. “It’s not that I don’t think you can’t handle it, but have you heard about this guy?”

“It’s pretty horrific,” Nat piped in, his statement directed at Julia. “There’ve been at least 5 killings in the last couple of weeks, all by this guy. They say the bodies were all torn up, blood completely drained from them.”

Julia made a face. “Who the hell would do something like that?”

“Apparently, this guy,” Nat gave.

“Well, we hope it’s him,” Jace told his best friend.

“My instincts are telling me this is the guy,” Nat shot back. Julia suddenly found herself trapped between her brother and his best friend, and her presence in the conversation was all but forgotten.

“Will both of you shut the hell up!” Reggie shouted at the two. He shot a glare at Nat, and pulled a strand of golden hair out of his face. “Nobody’s buying this shit about your instincts. What if this is just some random guy?”

Jace sighed. “I’m going to have to agree with him on this one,” he told the Vector-user.

“Well, whether it’s him or not, it doesn’t exactly change the approach, right?” Nat asked. Jace gave him a look, and the taller boy elaborated. “Look, whether this is the guy or not, I’ll follow him, staying on top of the building he’s closest to, and you three can keep a safe distance, alright? If we do this smart, we won’t get noticed. And if it’s not him, then no harm and no fuss. Capiche?”

“Hey, Dachis,” Reggie interjected. “If anyone wants to get close to this guy, it should be me!”

Nat made a gibberish noise somewhere between baffled and pissed. “You just said you don’t think he’s our guy! Why do you want to follow him all of a sudden?”

“I never said I didn’t think he was our guy, I said it was a possibility,” Reggie replied. “Besides, I’m not letting you hog all the credit.”

“I’m not hogging the credit, this is just about who is best equipped for the job,” Nat shot back.

“Then why not send Julia? She’s the most agile one here, and her reflexes are top-of-the-notch,” Reggie angrily said, pointing a finger at her. Julia wanted to butt in and break up the fight, but she was too busy registering that Reggie just gave her a compliment.

“It’s not about mobility, it’s about stealth,” Jace said.

“Those categories aren’t mutually exclusive,” Julia told her twin brother, biting back her anger. Reggie and Nat didn’t hear her comment, and Reggie kept arguing with Jace.

“If it’s stealth, why would we send him?” Reggie asked, pointing an accusatory finger at Nat. He paused for a moment, and Jace swore he saw a lightbulb go off over his head. “Hey, wait a minute,” the Goldbloom heir said to Jace, “whose side are you on anyways?”

“I’m not on anyone’s side, I’m just trying to think about this situation logically,” Jace shot back, completely calm.

As the three started bickering, Julia returned her gaze to the man on the street, only to find that he was gone. Julia frantically scanned the street and nearby alleys, eventually catching sight of their black-clad figure fleeing from the area.

“Uh, guys?” Julia asked, her words falling on deaf ears.

Reggie put a hand on Jace’s shoulder, his blood-red eyes tight with focus and agitation. “Hey, I was perfectly content doing my own hero work to get ahead in life,” he told the shorter boy. “You guys are the ones who approached **me** ,” he said, pointing a finger at himself, “not the other way around. I want this, too. You dragged me out here, now let me help you.”

He let go of Jace’s shoulder, pushing back slightly. The shorter boy stumbled, before resuming his original stance, glaring daggers.

“Guys?” Julia asked once more.

“Hey, we all have a part to play in this group,” Nat told Reggie. “And if we want to capture this guy and put ourselves out there, we need to work together.”

“Guys!”

All three of them, finally paying attention to Julia, turned around and found the green-haired girl pointing down at the streets. “He’s getting away!” she shouted.

Nat wasted no time. He eagerly sprinted over and leaped off the ledge of the building. Grabbing a nearby clothesline, Nat slowed his fall and landed to the ground with a dull thud, and he heard the sound of a nearby woman screaming in surprise.

Nat barely registered the noise, or the impact his feet made on the solid concrete. Right now, he was 100% focused on retrieving this man. Nat scanned ahead, and found that Julia was right: the cloaked man had run off at a lightning-quick pace. If he didn’t notice them before, he sure did now. Julia was right behind her friend, but going about her chase with a different approach. Activating her mutation right as she leaped off the edge, she felt the familiar tingling sensation of her atoms rearranging and her skin transforming.

Jace was lucky enough to inherit the abilities of their father, Jack, but Julia never cared. She had a completely different but equally versatile skill set. As her arm transformed into string--long and thin but nearly as strong as steel cables--and wrapped around the railguard of a nearby balcony, Julia swung down the market streets in a long arc, the wind rushing past her as she rapidly caught up to the suspected murderer.

Up on the roof, Jace sighed.

“Geez, could they be anymore reckless?” the younger Tenor twin asked.

Reggie shrugged. “I guess we’ll have to go find out,” he said, a daredevil grin on his face. “Hey, don’t hog all the spotlight, Dachis!” Reggie shouted at Nat as he leapt down.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chase continues.

Nat was in hot pursuit. He watched as the tiny, run-down buildings and overcrowded streets of the Cauldron District transformed into the massive architectural wonders of the Northern District. They pushed past dozens of people, some recognizing their assailant, some yelping in surprise. As they ran through a busy street, a young woman on a hoverbike nearly crashed into Nat, and she screamed something at him about watching where he was going, which Nat promptly ignored. 

In the quartet of him, Julia, Jace and Reggie, he was their fastest runner. But this guy they were chasing...he was something else. 

_ He has to be a meta, right?  _ Nat thought, as he pushed through yet another crowd of people.  _ There’s no way a normal person could run this fast.  _

Nat was just thankful his speed was nowhere near as ridiculous as Lorena. If that were the case, he’d have been left in the dust almost instantly. At least this way, he and the others had a fighting chance. Nat considered using his Vector, firing a warning shot at the guy, but he decided against it. Even now, as the Northern District streets got more spread out and open, there were still way too many people, and Nat would never forgive himself if he hurt an innocent person by accident. 

As Nat rounded a corner, he allowed himself a brief glimpse back at his friends. Julia was right above him, swinging from building to building. Her metahuman ability, Threadlife, was one of the most versatile that Nat had ever seen; while she used it mostly while fighting, it was clear that she was just as gifted in using it for mobility. Reggie was still running on the rooftops, keeping pace with Nat, but the buildings of Paradisa's Northern District were getting taller and wider, and it was getting harder and harder for Reggie to keep track of this guy. Jace had climbed to the ground but was several meters behind them. His stamina was running low, and it wouldn’t be much longer before his speed started decreasing further. They needed to end this quickly. 

Occasionally, their suspect would turn back to gauge how many people were chasing him. Nat could see his features clearly: he had a remarkably pale face; long, thin features; narrow eyes, black as coal; and a chiseled jawline you could cut glass on. 

The assailant made his way across the busy road, effortlessly leaping over and dodging multiple cars. This guy wasn’t just fast, he was agile to no end. 

As Nat noticed all of this, Julia continued her relentless pursuit, launching herself from building to building. When she got close enough, she tried creating a rope and throwing it at their runner, but he leaped over it without even looking back, as if he had eyes on the back of his head. 

“Damn, he’s good,” she hissed. 

Julia leaped off a nearby ledge and shot another line of string out, which wrapped around one of the traffic lights to her left. She swung in an arc, low enough to the ground that her legs were almost scraping against the asphalt road, and she let go just before losing momentum. The motion launched her forward at an intense speed, past even Nat, who looked up at his friend and comrade with awe even as he avoided getting hit by passing cars. 

The runner had made his way to the other end of the road, narrowly avoiding a collision with a racing truck. He entered a relatively outspread alleyway, and turned around just in time to notice the teenage girl rocketing towards him. Julia could hear him briefly curse, his voice hoarse and dry, before leaping to the side. He grabbed the handrail of a nearby fire escape and pulled himself out of the way; Julia realized a moment too late that, with her target out of the way, she was about to collide with the brick building. 

“Shit,” she muttered, before crashing into the wall. Julia fell to the surface but turned her body at the last second, catching herself and landing (relatively) gracefully on the filthy stone ground, albeit with some pain in her knees and a scrape on her right arm. 

Julia immediately rose to her feet and felt an explosion of pain on her right elbow where she collided with the alley wall.  _ I should have just waited for the others to catch up and help _ . The sensation of blood trickling down her arm and into her palm told her that the scrape had broken skin.  _ I’ll need to bandage that in the morning _ . 

Julia was standing in the alleyway, holding her right elbow, while their suspected murderer stood atop the rail, several feet above her. He looked Julia up and down. Threadlife started to deactivate, and the strings she had used to swing around town on began to revert, coalescing back into her fingers and hands. When she crashed into the building, the messy bun she kept her hair in came loose, and green locks covered the side of her face. 

“Hm, a metahuman,” he grumbled. “I haven’t had to fight one of you in a long time.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a flash of light. The cloaked man leaped out of the way just in time as a blast of smoke and ash narrowly missed his head, singing the hairs on his neck. 

He looked in the direction of the attack, and found Nat Dachis standing several meters away from Julia, his right hand smoking. 

“Dammit,” Nat said. “I missed him.”

The cloaked figure let out a dry chuckle. “Oh, my, are you  **all** metas?” 

Reggie and Jace finally caught up to Nat. All four of the teenagers were standing in close proximity of one-another, looking up at their assailant, but his focus was only on Nat. 

“No, no, there’s somethin' different about you,” he said, looking at Nat. “I can feel the power of the Vortex inside of you. It’s stronger than normal.”

Though Nat said nothing, Reggie raised an eyebrow. “And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Jace looked to Nat, confusion written on his face. “Hey, bro, what is this guy talking about?” Nat pretended not to hear him. 

The cloaked man closed his eyes; the aura he felt from Nat was undeniably strong. When he opened them, his eyes had changed color. One was blood red, the other emerald green. 

“Well, that settles it, now doesn’t it?” he said. Leaping from his position on the balcony, the man took off again. 

In a split-second, Nat was in hot pursuit once more. “Oh, no, I’m not letting you get away!” he shouted. The cloaked figure landed on the ground, energized and enthused, a broad grin across his face. This wasn’t a chase for him; this was a game, and he was about to checkmate. 

Jace tried to shout at Nat, to tell him not to go out of sight, but Nat had already rounded the corner of the alley and disappeared. 

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact, a lot of elements of this story were based off my StarBlaze fanfiction, a crossover between DC, Star Wars, BlazBlue and a bunch of other series. For all intents and purposes, Synthesis of the Galaxy has basically absorbed it, but I'm not sure how frequently I'll update either.


End file.
